Jean Bodin

For more information on Jean Bodin, visit Britannica.com.

The French political philosopher Jean Bodin (1529/1530-1596) influenced European intellectual history through his formulation of economic theories and of principles of good government and through his advocacy of religious tolerance in an intolerant age.

Jean Bodin was born in Angers, the son of a tailor. He received his early education in Angers and Paris as a member of the religious order of Carmelites. After leaving the monastic life, he studied and later taught law at the University of Toulouse. In 1561 he began to practice law in Paris and at about the same time published two significant books. In Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (A Method for the Easy Learning of History), Bodin attempted to determine the principles of universal law through a study of history; in Response aux paradoxes de M. Malestroit (1568; Response to the Paradoxes of Monsieur Malestroit), he contended that the revolutionary rise in prices in the 16th century was caused by the great influx of gold and silver - an analysis which has earned him a distinguished position among early modern European economists.

Bodin won the favor of King Henry III of France and of his brother, the Duke of Alençon. In 1571 he became counselor to the duke and was appointed king's attorney at Laon in 1576. In the same year he served as a delegate of the Third Estate (commoners) at the Estates General of Blois. There Bodin antagonized the clergy and nobility by favoring negotiation instead of war with the French Protestants. He also opposed the King's demand to gain additional revenue by selling public lands and royal demesnes. Because of his stand, Bodin lost favor with the King, but he continued to serve the duke.

Bodin's most famous work, Six livres de la république (1576; Six Books of the Republic), reflects his distress over the chaos in France during the Wars of Religion. The principles Bodin proposes for a well-ordered state are based on the doctrine of sovereignty. He believed the state needed one supreme authority to make and enforce law, an authority whose power was limited only by natural and divine law and by the "fundamental laws" of the land. Although he conceded that there could be different types of government, he thought monarchy the most stable because its sovereignty was not divided.

In 1583 Bodin returned to Laon as procurator to the presidial court and spent the rest of his life there. Bodin's interest turned from politics to religion, and his writings reflect this change. In La Demonomanie des sorciers (1580; The Demonomania of Witches), he advocated the burning of witches. In the Heptaplomeres (1588) - a colloquy between a Jew, a Moslem, a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Catholic, a theist, and an epicurean - his characters eventually decide that since one religion is as good as another, they should live together in charity. In 1596 Bodin died of plague in Laon.

Further Reading

For specialized works on Bodin in English see the still-worth-while chapter in J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928; rev. ed. 1957); Beatrice Reynolds, Proponents of Limited Monarchy in Sixteenth Century France: Francis Hotman and Jean Bodin (1931); and Julian H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (1963).

(1529-96) French philosopher and legal theorist, most famous for the doctrine of sovereignty in his Six livres de la république of 1576. Bodin presented a complete system of knowledge divided between religious history (why God had created the universe and what he had established for human guidance), natural history (the physical laws of the universe), and human history (the structure and development of government). The problem faced by Bodin was that although the political order should reflect the divine order, France, during the Wars of Religion (1559-89), embodied disorder and civil war. He proposed that any properly constituted political society (république in the ancient sense of res publica) must have a sovereign which can make and break the law for the good of the society. Bodin is often seen as a predecessor of Hobbes in his view of sovereignty, but his system was based on Christianity, and did not approach what later became the doctrine of absolutism. Bodin's sovereign has the right to do anything but only in order to realize the divine plan. This was not an empty limitation (as it may have been for Hobbes) but involved the practical defence and maintenance of the established rights and liberties of individuals and groups, something Bodin saw as superior to heredity as the basis for sovereignty.

— Carl Slevin

Bodin, Jean (1529/30-96). Political and religious thinker. Born in Angers, he studied law in Toulouse, where he hoped to be instrumental in setting up a new humanist college. He became a member of the Parlement de Paris in 1561, and was obliged to sign an oath of Catholic alliegance. His Protestant sympathies, however, led him to oppose the policies of oppression recommended at the États Généraux at Blois in 1576. He is, in consequence, regarded as one of the more influential members of the moderate Politique movement. His later decision to ally himself with the Catholic Ligue was probably taken under duress.

He is most famous for his Six livres de la République (1576, republished in Latin in 1586), in which he was the first to provide an autonomous definition of the principle of sovereignty. His analysis of the various kinds of sovereignty, and in particular of the various factors which influence its nature and development, looks forward to Montesquieu's Esprit des lois; but he is evidently preoccupied with contemporary Protestant justification of tyrannicide: hence his overwhelming desire to create a strong—and just—monarchy. Certain checks and balances are allowed for, but sovereignty is seen as being vested solely in the monarch. In this way, Bodin's work prepares the way for 17th-c. theories of the divine right of kings [see Monarchy].

His Réponse aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit (1568) provides the first rigorous analysis of the mechanisms which fuel inflation. As such, it too is ‘modern’ in outlook, as is the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566), which insists on the need for rigorous method in the field of ‘universal’ (i.e. comparative) history.

The Colloquium Heptaplomeres (which remained in manuscript until the middle of the 19th c.) also shows Bodin to be a man who is not afraid to open up radically new perspectives. It is a discussion between a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Jew, a Moslem, and a Deist. Different speakers are occasionally allowed to score points over each other; but, in the end, no single view is allowed to prevail. Bodin would seem, therefore, to be recommending a basic tolerance. The modern reader will be all the more surprised, therefore, by his Démonomanie (1580), in which he vigorously defends the witch trials which Montaigne so earnestly deplored.

[James Supple]

Bibliography

• J. H. Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (1973)

Bodin, Jean (c. 1529-96). French political philosopher. Bodin advocated absolute sovereignty as the only effective guarantee of peace in the State, a doctrine anticipating Hobbes. His main work was Six livres de la république (1576/7).

Bodin, Jean (1529/30–1596), French political philosopher. Jean Bodin came from a comfortable family in Angers and received an excellent humanist education. He studied law and taught briefly at the University of Toulouse but was unable to obtain a permanent academic position. He was employed mostly in the royal administration and for a time was secretary to the Duke d'Alençon. A royalist at heart, Bodin was reformist and liberal in fiscal and social policy. He favored religious toleration as the most politique solution to the religious warfare that ravaged France in his time. In 1576, as a deputy of the third at the Estates-General of Blois, he staunchly opposed the grant of new taxation that the crown would have used to prosecute religious war.

Despite his occasional involvement in high politics, Bodin was an indefatigable humanist scholar who sought to encompass and synthesize all the learning of his time. He produced a corpus of extensive treatises on all the main subjects of his day, including the methodology of history, economic theory, comparative public law and politics, witchcraft, comparative religion, natural philosophy, and ethics.

Bodin's Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem (1566; Method for the easy comprehension of history) is a guide to the reading of historians that outlined much of his later writing. But his best-known work and the most influential is his Six livres de la république (1576; Six books of a commonwealth), which is a massive treatise on comparative public law and policy. The first half of the book is the earliest modern treatise on public law. Its organizing principle is Bodin's pioneering analysis and construction of the concept of sovereignty as the juridical condition for the existence of a state. Bodin also argued, mistakenly, that sovereignty was indivisible, as well as absolute and juridically perpetual. He rejected the possibility of a mixed constitution in which supreme authority was divided between two or more agents, and thus he broke with the received opinion that the constitutions of Rome and other classical republics were mixed. On Bodin's reinterpretation they were either pure democracies or pure aristocracies with respect to the juridical locus of supreme authority, although not necessarily in the day-to-day conduct of affairs.

Most politically significant of all Bodin's revisions of received traditions, however, was his interpretation of the French constitution as a strictly absolute monarchy. He had once admitted and even approved at least some juridical limits on the king. But he was finally driven to absolutism not only by the logic of his position but by his deep-seated fears of anarchy. Bodin had never admitted the right of a people to resist a tyrant and thought, mistakenly, that he could exclude that right juridically by denying the people any authoritative role in government.

Appearances notwithstanding, his reformist views on taxation were technically consistent with his stand on nonresistance. Although he held that all kings, including the French, ordinarily required the consent of the Estates-General for levying new taxation, this was not a limitation that the people had imposed or could legally enforce. It followed directly from the law of nature by which the ruler was responsible to God alone. The need for consent, moreover, did not apply in emergencies, and with Bodin's followers it was reduced to a mere counsel of wise governance.

Perhaps the most interesting of Bodin's works today is his Colloquium Heptaplomeres de Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis (Colloquium of the seven about secrets of the sublime), which was written around 1588. Seven interlocutors, meeting in Venice, debated their competing claims as to the true religion and finally agreed to disagree in friendship. So heretical did this seem to Bodin himself and to succeeding generations who knew of it that it was not published until the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Colloquium is remarkable even now. In an arresting anticipation of modern religious pluralism, Bodin argued in effect that worship in any of the major religions was pleasing to God. Underlying all of them was a Neoplatonic natural religion of which all were variations that arose from adaptations to different climates and political circumstances. Each of Bodin's seven interlocutors represented a different religious viewpoint, and the inconclusive debate among them served to show that no positive system could sustain its claims to exclusive truth against the others. At times, however, Bodin seemed to be suggesting that Judaism is the oldest and the best. And it may well be that some form of philosophic Judaism was the ultimate outcome of Bodin's lifelong search for the true religion. The Paradoxon (1596), a treatise on ethics that was among Bodin's last endeavors, clearly indicates that Bodin, greatly influenced by the thought of Philo of Alexandria, had turned to a kind of Judaism. Bodin was buried as a Catholic, in accordance with his wishes. But many of his books were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in a series of steps beginning in 1596.

Yet another contribution to modern thought was Bodin's brilliant 1568 essay, titled Résponses au paradoxes du sieur de Malestroict, on the great European price inflation of the time. It was caused, he argued, not by debasement of the coinage, as was widely thought, but by the importation of bullion from America that lowered the value of gold and silver. This was the first application of the quantity theory of money. Another contribution was less enduring. Anticipating Montesquieu, Bodin tried to correlate climate and national character to illumine not only political attitudes but religious tendencies as well.

Perhaps the least known of Bodin's works is his Theatrum Naturae (1596; The theater of nature), which is an encyclopedic collection of facts, observations, and principles of nature in the style of late Renaissance science. Its premodern view of nature supports a natural theology purporting to show God's concern for humanity in the natural order.

There are dark spots in Bodin's writing, of which his book on the detection and punishment of witches and warlocks (La démonomanie des sorciers), published in 1580, is a notorious example. But such superstitions of the time apart, his universal synthesis of knowledge, although in large part outdated, was a huge intellectual accomplishment.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Bodin, Jean. Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime. Translated with an introduction and notes by Marion Leathers Daniels Kuntz. Princeton, 1975. Translation of Colloquium Heptaplomeres de Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis (1593).

——. Method for the Easy Comprehension of History. Translated by Beatrice Reynolds. New York, 1945. Translation of Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem (1566).

——. On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth. Translated and edited by Julian H. Franklin. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1992.

——. The Six Books of a Commonweale. Edited and translated with an introduction and notes by Kenneth Douglas Mc Rae. Cambridge, Mass., 1962. Translation of Les six livres de la république (1576) together with variations from De Republica Libri Sex (1586). This is the only complete translation of Bodin's chief work on politics. It is a reproduction of the Richard Knolles translation, which is archaic and difficult to read at times. But Mc Rae's variations and excellent annotations are invaluable.

Secondary Sources

Blair, Ann. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton, 1997. An outstanding study of a pre-Baconian and pre-Cartesian philosopher of nature.

Denzer, Horst, ed. Verhandlungen der internationalen Bodin Tagung in München. Munich, 1973. Contains eight articles in English on various aspects of Bodin's thought.

Franklin, Julian H. Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory. Cambridge, U.K., 1973.

Rose, Paul Lawrence. Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser. Geneva, 1980.

—JULIAN H. FRANKLIN

A jurist and student of demonology who died of the plague in 1596. An Angevin by birth, he studied law, classics, philosophies, and economics in his youth and became professor of Roman law at the University of Toulouse. In 1561 he went to Paris, where he served the king, but lost royal favor on publication of his book Republique, which contained concepts of monarchy that were ahead of his time. His most famous work was De la demonomanie des sorciers (Demonomania of witches), which played a large part in the growth of witchcraft persecutions, because it defined witchcraft and laid down methods of interrogation, torture, and execution.

His Colloquium heptaplomeron de abdites rerum sublimium varcanus, aroused very unfavorable opinions regarding his religious views. In it Bodin discussed the theological opinions of Jews, Moslems, and deists to the disadvantage of the Christian faith, and although he died a Catholic, he professed in his time the tenets of Protestantism, Judaism, sorcery, atheism, and deism.

The Demonomanie was published in Paris in 1580 and again under the title Flèau des demons et des sorciers at Wiort in 1616. In its first and second books Bodin demonstrated that spirits have communication with mankind, and he traced the various characteristics and forms that distinguish good spirits from evil. His topics include the methods of diabolic prophecy and communication; evocation of evil existences; of pacts with the devil; of journeys through the air to the sorcerers' Sabbath; of infernal ecstasies; of spells by which one may change himself into a werewolf, and of carnal communion with an incubus or succubus. The third book explains how to prevent the work of sorcerers and obviate their charms and enchantments, and the fourth divulges the manner in which sorcerers may be known. He concluded his study by refuting the work of Johan Weyer, or Wierus, who, he asserted, was in error in believing that sorcerers were fools and people of unsound mind. Bodin recommended that Weyer's books should be burned "for the honour of God."

Bodin participated in many witchcraft trials as judge and was responsible for the torture of many suspected witches, including children and invalids. He advised using hot irons to cauterize the flesh so that putrefaction could be cut out. One of his precepts was that presumption and conjecture of witchcraft ranked as proof.

Sources:

Robbins, Rossell Hope. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Crown Publishers, 1959.

Weyer, Johannes. Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, De Praestigiis. Edited by George Mora. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2006)

Jean Bodin

Western philosophy Renaissance philosophy
Full name	Jean Bodin
Born	1530
Died	1596
Main interests	Legal philosophy, political philosophy, economy
Notable ideas	Quantity theory of money
Influenced Giovanni Botero Montesquieu

Jean Bodin (1530–1596), born in Angers, was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty (see Divine Right of Kings).

Bodin lived during the Reformation, writing against the background of religious and civil conflict—particularly that, in his native France, between the (Calvinist) Huguenots and the state-supported Catholic Church. He remained a Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority and was sometimes accused of crypto-Calvinism. Towards the end of his life he wrote a dialogue between different religions, including representatives of Judaism, Islam and natural theology, in which all agreed to coexist in concord.

His books divided opinion: some French writers were full of praise, while the later Scottish philosopher, Francis Hutchinson was his detractor, criticising his methodology.

He died in Laon during a bubonic plague epidemy.

Contents 1 De la République 2 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 3 Colloquium of the Seven 4 On Witchcraft (La Démonomanie des Sorciers) 5 References 6 External links

De la République

Jean Bodin's most famous work was written in 1576. The ideas in the Six Books of the Commonwealth (Les Six livres de la République) on the importance of climate in the shaping of a people's character also were influential, finding a prominent place in the work of contemporary Italian thinker Giovanni Botero (1544-1617) and later in French philosopher the Baron de Montesquieu's (1689-1755) climatic determinism.

Bodin's classical definition of sovereignty is: “la puissance absolue et perpetuelle d’une Republique” (Sovereignty is that absolute and perpetual power vested in a commonwealth). His main ideas about sovereignty are found in chapter VIII and X of Book I. Including his statement "The sovereign Prince Hugo Mota is only accountable to God".

Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem

In France, Bodin was most noted as a historian for his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem(1566)(Method for the Easy Understanding of History.) He writes, "Of history, that is, the true narration of things, there are three kinds: human, natural and divine." As a politician himself, Bodin contributed to the restoration of France as a strong nation-state.

Finally, Bodin was among the first to recognize the interrelationship between the amount of goods and the amount of money in circulation. The boatloads of silver arriving in Spain from the Bolivian (then Peruvian) mine of Potosí were wreaking inflationary havoc at the time. Bodin laid the foundation for the "quantity theory of money."

Colloquium of the Seven

In 1588 Bodin wrote the Latin work Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis. It is a conversation about the nature of truth amongst seven educated men each with a distinct religious or philosophical orientation—a natural philosopher, a Calvinist, a Muslim, a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Jew, and a skeptic.^[1] The 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica states "It is curious that Leibnitz, who originally regarded the Colloquium as the work of a professed enemy of Christianity, subsequently described it as a most valuable production."^[2] Because of this work, Bodin is often praised as one of the first proponents of religious tolerance in the western world.

On Witchcraft (La Démonomanie des Sorciers)

Perhaps Bodin most controversial statement was his recommendation of torture, even in cases of the disabled and children, to try to confirm guilt of witchcraft. He asserted that not even one witch could be erroneously condemned if the correct procedures were followed, suspicion being enough to torment the accused because rumours concerning witches were almost always true. Some scholars have attributed Bodin's attitude towards so-called witches as part of a populationist strategy typical of mercantilism.^[3]

References

1. ^ Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime By Jean Bodin, Marion Leathers Kuntz, Penn State Press, 2008 (original pub. 1975) ISBN 0271034351
2. ^ 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica
3. ^ Heinsohn, Gunnar; Steiger, Otto (1999). "Birth Control: The Political-Economic Rationale behind Jean Bodin's Démonomanie". History of Political Economy 31 (3): 423–448. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/history_of_political_economy/v031/31.3heinsohn.html. 

External links

Philosophy portal

• "Jean Bodin" article by Mario Turchetti in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006-12-12
• Works by Jean Bodin at Project Gutenberg
• Six Books of the Commonwealth - English translation of Six Books of the Commonwealth
• Encyclopædia Britannica 11th ed. article

v • d • e Mercantilists Gerard de Malynes · Edward Misselden · Thomas Mun · Jean Bodin · Jean-Baptiste Colbert · Josiah Child · William Petty · John Locke · Charles Davenant · Dudley North · Ferdinando Galiani · James Denham-Steuart · Philipp Wilhelm von Hornick

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)